Today’s News and Commentary — August 15

In the contentious world of education policy, Politico reports that Michelle Rhee, the “outspoken education reformer,” will “host a series of national town hall meetings” in cities across the country. Despite Rhee’s history of clashing with teachers’ unions during her tenure as chancellor of D.C.’s public schools, she will be joined by George Parker, former president of the Washington Teachers’ Union.

For slightly older students and graduates, the debate over unpaid internships continues. Kelli Goff at theWashington Post opines that Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook COO and author of Lean In, should be ashamed that her non-profit was seeking an unpaid intern, despite herself earning over $90 million in the past year.

Over in California, a court has ordered a 60-day injunction against further BART strikes. William B. Gould IV, a former chairman of the NLRB, argues in the L.A. Times, that both management and labor take inspiration from how Major League Baseball resolved its salary disputes in 1973 and turn to binding arbitration.

In labor news overseas, the Washington Post reports that Samsung has been sued by a Brazilian labor group for poor working conditions at the firm’s assembly lines in Brazil.

The immigration reform battle continues over Congress’ August recess. The Washington Post reports that immigration reform advocates and unions have sent “caravans of cars and buses” to House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s (R, CA-22) district to push him to support reform. Rep. McCarthy’s district has a significant agriculture industry, which relies on immigrant labor, making him perhaps more persuadable than other Republican Members of Congress.

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OnLabor is a blog dev­oted to workers, unions, and their politics. We in­ter­pret our sub­ject broadly to in­clude the cur­rent cri­sis in the tra­di­tional union move­ment (why union de­cline is hap­pen­ing and what it means for our so­ci­ety); the new and con­tested forms of worker or­ga­ni­za­tion that are fill­ing the la­bor union gap; how work ought to be struc­tured and man­aged; how work­ers ought to be rep­re­sented and com­pen­sated; and the ap­pro­pri­ate role of gov­ern­ment – all three branches – in each of these is­sues.